and this, too shall fade
by icecreamlova
Summary: She is maybe the most remarkable woman Obi-Wan has ever met. Five ways Obi-Wan loved Padme: queen, senator, ally, friend, and one other way. That doesn't make it hurt any less. Canon.


_a/n: originally five double-drabbles (on Word). FFnet seems to have upped the word count._

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><p><strong>and this, too shall fade<br>**_By icecreamlova_

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**i. queen**

She is maybe the most remarkable woman Obi-Wan has ever met, and she is all of fourteen. Anakin thinks she looks like an angel; Obi-Wan thinks she looks like a queen beneath her chameleon disguise. She is barely into adolescence, and she is leading an entire planet.

She is supremely articulate, and utterly clear even without words. She blazes onto the Senate floor, leaving gaping mouths and fiery hearts behind her. Her voice reverberates from a distance. He does not gape, but he watches; despite the royalty he's met already, she leaves an impression he knows will linger.

Naboo is hers to govern, and so it is hers to reflect on, and hers to guide, and hers to protect at any personal cost. She kneels (Obi-Wan never would) to the species her predecessors would have destroyed; she accepts aid with grace and smiles at the ones who offered, even if he's just a Jedi who she will see but rarely again. The shots from her blaster are accurate and precise. She offers surrender because she loves peace, and takes their retort in stride.

He barely speaks to her and yet he knows that the Republic needs more people like her.

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**ii. senator**

Obi-Wan barely remembers the last time the Senate reached an accord, but they do so not long after she takes center stage.

He watches, of course. Everyone does, even (or perhaps, particularly) the senators who disagree. Even Anakin, whose gaze droops at the threat of politics, watches her with wide

eyes. Waiting eyes.

She does not make them wait. Much. She has always been an excellent speaker, as wise as Senator Organa, as measured as Mon Mothma, and somehow more passionate than both. She accentuates the content of her speech with pauses that keep the nearly endless grid of hovering platforms waiting. She has less rhetoric in her words, but they make more sense. That is why so many others listen. That is what worries her opponents.

She lets shouting rise and fade, and does some shouting of her own. She is the queen's mouthpiece; she balances on the fine blade between her opinion and her planet's, and Obi-Wan cannot tell which is which.

Her greatest power, maybe, is the silence in her wake; all other speakers who follow her seem inadequate. It secures her victory.

Obi-Wan listens, and thinks to himself that the Senate needs more people like her.

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**iii. ally**

Her smile makes Anakin's face light up in admiring response. He swings between thinking it an excellent thing, and an undesirable temptation for his former Padawan.

When there is nothing beyond friendship in those smiles, when he can absently rub his talisman, a blue warming crystal, and beat back Council reprimands, he values her ability with Anakin beyond compare. Like any older brother (father? Absurd, he is not that old yet!) he enjoys knowing there are people who also banter with Anakin, who share memories with Anakin, who seem to make Anakin feel at home on Coruscant.

He is grateful, too, while on missions in the Rim (her gun in hand, Anakin with his lightsaber which he "honestly did not lose, Master!" and Obi-Wan armed with his wits), while meeting the squabbling Senate (her sharp tongue ready, his patience tapped), or while conferring in Council (her opinions held at ready.) Obi-Wan could count on one hand the people he'd rather have guarding his back and still have fingers left; of them, two are dead, and all are Jedi unsuited to her specialty. Specialties: Anakin is a category unto himself.

He watches, and decides that Anakin needs more companions like her.

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**iv. friend**

She is maybe the most remarkable woman Obi-Wan has ever met, and she is dying.

The thought is so sharp, so devastating, it pierces even through the numbness that has settled like snow on his shoulders: icy, flawed composition that allowed him victory over the Sith. (His apprentice.) The fallen Jedi. (His brother.) Darth Vader. (Anakin.)

Padmé.

He will never again listen to her resounding speeches. He will never watch her banter with Anakin, both grinning and almost free from the war. He will never discuss strategies, politics, the different textures of tea that he learned of when caring for Qui-Gon... never speak with her at length again. They will never again torment Anakin with his tales of his apprenticeship, and her laughter. They will never fight side by side, blaster bolts and creaking durasteel filling the air as they do their best to survive.

She will never be Padmé, beautiful, passionate, and alive, again.

She has been queen, senator and lover (though not HIS queen, senator, or lover) and others will mourn with that loss.

Obi-Wan will mourn a friend; she was ONLY a friend.

It's funny how that doesn't cheapen their relationship, or make it hurt any less.

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**v. parent**

Padme is dead.

Vader is alive.

Leia is gone.

Luke is here.

Obi-Wan is buried. Old Ben Kenobi lives alone on a planet of sandstorms and sloping dunes, a trillion miles and a decade away from his past and the people who populated it.

One look at Luke brings it all back.

He has his father's fair hair and his father's clear eyes and his father's hatred of the sand. He has his father's abilities and his father's wide as sky dreams and his father's love of high speed, high risk, high reward racing.

But sometimes when Luke watches, moves, speaks... it's not Anakin that he sees. Anakin never had Luke's ability to talk face to face, and inspire by being himself; never had patience to steady his fiery dreams. Never had that particular crease of the brow, and that particular expression never formed in prelude to argument.

Anakin never let go of the past in order to focus on the future.

Luke is easy to love, even from beyond a distant sand dune. But then, Obi-Wan loved his parents too, and he finds them in Luke's face now.

The galaxy needs more people like Luke... and so does he.

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**Well?**


End file.
